Read the first part of Brent Petway’s career recollections as he wrote them himself for Eurohoops.
The happy-go-lucky side of the Moon
I had to fact-check myself because I don’t wanna put out anything false from jumbled memory and this first year was not the year Printezis was injured. I was playing anywhere from 18-24 minutes a game sharing minutes with him, which means I was really stressing hard if I was sharing minutes and still stressing the F… out. One main proponent of my stress, my man, coach Mamarinos.
Long-time Olympiacos guy, I think he meant well by pushing me because he was probably one of the guys who went to bat for me in the signing process. I know this because I met personally with him in a “secret” meeting before the summer, just me, him, and my no-good agent. When I said we had intense assistant coaches, I meant mainly him and Pappas. Seemingly I was Mamarinos’ project though because it didn’t matter where I was on the floor, I would hear “BRENT WTF” from him and that got very old very quick with my mindset already being that no one thinks I’m good enough to be here, so him “blaming” me for anything going wrong on the court was just reinforcing that shit in my head.
Again looking back on it, I think he actually meant well but it just wasn’t helping the way he intended. Me being the way I am, I never shouted back and got disrespectful in any way to him to let him know that shit was bothering me. I just internalized it and kept pushing. NEVER do that it’s bad for your mental health ladies and gentlemen, very bad.
Ok, now my back is getting better but I haven’t even shot one jump shot for a month. I couldn’t run so no cardio, so of course, it’s gonna take me at least 2-3 weeks to get back in shape and feeling normal again. Jamario Moon was signed while I was injured and he was the exact opposite of me personality-wise. He could make a mistake and forget it immediately even with the coaches screaming at him from the bench, and not care at all.
Funny story: Jamario is playing defense, a guy gets a back cut layup on him and he is still standing near the 3pt line. Coaches from the sideline scream “Jamario weak side defense!!!”
Jamario’s response was “I ain’t see him, coach.” I put a towel over my face to hide the fact that I was laughing so hard. Of course, you didn’t see him that’s why he scored, but that was Jamario, then he would come right down and hit a three or dunk on somebody two plays later. Having that level of confidence is something I never had. If you look at my career, years where I had coaches tell me “yo, we are with you, do your thing”, I was one of the most efficient all-around players. That happened in two places after high school. Bryan Gates and his staff in the G-league and Rethymno.
Bartzokas would let me hoop too, but it was the chirping from the assistants that would always make me think twice about shooting or trying to score too much. You see there are many players out there, that can do a lot more than what you see on TV or in the games but they are put in a box so that other players can shine because it’s not “their” team. So when you see a player coming to your team that maybe was averaging 16 or more and they get to your team and all of sudden their play struggles and they seem totally different, many times it’s more than just they are having a bad year or they are not a good player. Is the coach letting them play free, and do they mesh with the locker room politics?
Locker Room Politics
What is that you ask? People think it’s just twelve guys from the outside: the best scorers score the most, the best players play, and if you miss your open shots, you are a bum. No, the best teams are like this, where everyone understands their role, no one is jealous of another man/woman, and no one is afraid to let a guy get his shine.
In Rethymno, I was never the best scorer, or even best player, we had Zack Wright and Dionte Christmas my first year who were trading MVPs of the whole league from week to week. Most Americans in my position would get jealous that these other two guys were killing, scoring 20 every week but to me, I’m like “yo, we’re winning and I’m doing ok”. Why do I need to hate on these two because they are supremely gifted dudes? Really watching those two go back and forth every week was crazy and I’m seeing it close up.
I played with Coby Karl and Luke Jackson my second year in the G-league and when I say locker room politics these two were the antithesis of that. I was no threat to either of these two guys getting their NBA call-up but they definitely treated me as such. I was the defensive guy, doing all the dirty work, so they can go down on offense, jack up shots and get their numbers to look good on the stat sheet.
Future and present players, here is what happens and how you can find a snake in your locker room. Any game where I would come out in the first half and have a good scoring game going, somehow, the ball just stopped finding me in the second half. Who were the ball handlers? Hmm, let me think, Coby Karl and Luke Jackson. Luke Jackson always rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning, just his attitude and look was like he was above everyone, even the coaches in the G-league. The crazy thing is they treated him even more like a king for acting like that, while I was there working hard as hell watching this shit like man, this shit is backward.
He just had that frat boy look that you wanted to punch him in the mouth because everything he said was condescending, but I couldn’t do that because that would make me the unprofessional black thug. While I’m on Locker Room Politics now I’ll say this: Find one teammate or coach that says they thought I was unprofessional or a bad teammate. Ok, I say that to say this, all the locker rooms I have been in there are only two. maybe three guys that I absolutely do not like at all. Hate is too strong of a word but there are maybe three guys that I really wanted to fight while I was on the team with them: Luke Jackson, Dimitris Agravanis, and Jack Devecchio.
Agravanis was young but damn man, his mentality was unlike any I have ever seen before. He thought for sure he was better than me and that I don’t have a problem with it, because you should feel like that. But when you go as far as trying to injure me on the low in practice, now we have a problem. I’m not talking one or two times, I’m talking every day. I gotta watch my feet when he closes out on my shot, or watch out for elbows. I would joke with teammates that I’m sure this dude had voodoo dolls of me and Printezis in his room because every year one of us had something happening to us at all times, the shit was crazy.
Jack was the team captain in Sassari and I never had a more fake team guy in my life. If you are watching the games it looks like he is playing hard defense ya know being a glue guy, but I was a professional glue guy so I know what that shit really looks like, and from the inside Jack was fake and it’s nothing I hate more than fake tough guys or just fake people in general. Jack played at “3”. I played “4” (until they completely f***ed me and had me playing 5 at 210 lbs) so we had the rule to switch all screens. The easiest defense you can ever play. If we came together just switch.
We were pretty much the same size, Jack would yell switch and routinely stay with his man while I’m switching onto his man, leaving my guy free to walk the ball in the rim if he pleased. Then he would tell me “my bad”, but when the coach would ask what happen he was as quiet as a church mouse. This happened pretty much every game at least once. So I’m just out here looking like a dumbass and he is whispering “my bad”. Now if I don’t switch and his man scores he can say to the coach “well I said switch”, but if I do switch my guy is lining up three-pointers checking the wind with his fingers like he is at the damn Masters’ tournament on the 17th hole. There is more on the Sassari season that was a complete debacle but I’ll get to that.